Minibike launches Digital College Network's dcnlive.com

We are pleased to announce the launch of Digital College Network's dcnlive.com website. The delivery included a new brand mark, user experience design, wire-frames, website design, product requirements document, creative brief, communications platform and style and usage guide. minibike worked with the developers and client through the build to ensure the original intent of the experience would manifest on the live site.

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Biography: Chris Schmidt, Director User Experience

minibike is incredibly pleased to announce the addition of Chris Schmidt, a talented, proven, versatile veteran of all things cyberspace, with an instinctual eye for the minutiae. Christmas definitely came early this year...

Having held Strategy and Creative Direction positions at companies such as Method Design, LeapFrog and LEGO, Chris has combined business realism with creativity to help clients achieve new levels of user connection. Through recent work with media companies such as CNN and PBS, Chris has focused on transforming web sites from simply outbound communication platforms to entertainment and social connection platforms.

Minibike Lands Digital College Network Account

Minibike is all revved up and ready to begin work on Digital College Network’s creative and brand strategy, social marketing program, and launch of their new website, due to go live in early 2009.

The Digital College Network is North America’s largest collegiate digital network reaching more than 3.5 million college students, faculty, and alumni in 245 locations across the U.S. By 2009, the network will be expanded to 500 college and university bookstores, making DCN the most effective way to reach the 18-24 demographic in North America.

http://www.digitalcollegenetwork.com/

minibike is now a facebook group...

...and, officially launched, as we just received our LLC papers in the mail. Before we break champaign over the bow, we’re going to settle into our new office in a soon-t0-be-disclosed location.

Project: MyPathTV Demo

http://centralviewer.com/production/mypathtv.com/

MyPathTV is the mind-body-spirit online network. It encourages viewers and members to share their life experience and personal growth journey with the greater community, through activities that revolve around an incredibly rich library of video content featuring great teachers like Ram Dass, Sylvia Boorstein, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Joseph Campell. User-generated content lives along side the teacher’s content, adding personalization, texture, perspective and value to the viewing, learning and sharing experience.

The primary challenge was to create viral, brand-promoting tools while still remaining true to the core site concept of chronicling one’s personal journey in a social setting. To do this, we developed personally resonating prompts and challenges, based on data collected and assumptions made about a member’s personal preferences and affinities. Examples of this include:

• An “Ask” module allows members to set rules around everything from asking other members for advice to becoming mentors themselves.
• The “Dare” function temps a member to engage in a new experience and share the results.
• The “Learn” function pairs guided questions with video, leading users to a place of exploration and discovery.
• The Lotus flower

A secondary challenge was to create an appropriate merit system that simply and directly reflected a member’s involvement with myPathTV. We chose a lotus flower as an apt symbol: as a member contributes and becomes a more integral part of the community, their lotus flower grows and their visibility increases, eventually leading to eligibility to become a mentor.

Biography: Geoff Katz, Advisor

Geoff brings over a decade of experience working with pioneering interactive television companies like TiVo and DIRECTV, and breakthrough emerging media platform companies such as Liberate, Excite@Home, and PacketVideo.

Geoff has contributed to two Primetime Emmy® Award winning interactive television projects. In 2006 his work on the TiVo Service was recognized for excellence by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for outstanding achievement in interactive television. While working at Zetools (acquired by Tandberg Television in 2006), Geoff produced an interactive version of ABC Television's 'Celebrity Mole: Yucatan' for the Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition platform, which was awarded the 2004 Primetime Emmy Award for interactive television. In addition to his role at Method, Geoff is currently acting as chairman of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group Emmy Awards committee, which is responsible for awarding the 2008 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media.

Over the last decade he has worked as a creative director for advertising at Organic, developed interactive entertainment properties at Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, broadband content services for Excite@Home, 3G video services at PacketVideo, and interactive TV applications at Liberate. Most recently, Geoff was VP, Media & Entertainment at brand experience agency Method, Inc. Before joining Method, he worked as a Product Designer at TiVo, focusing on the design of new broadband applications and services for the TiVo platform. Before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area to join TiVo he worked as a producer in the Advanced Services & Content group at DIRECTV, Inc. in Los Angeles where he created and launched DIRECTV Active - an interactive television channel on the DIRECTV Network that provides consumers with data driven services, programming promotions, and advertising.

Biography: Beth O’Rourke, Founder, Creative Director

Beth’s knowledge runs deep in all aspects of the design process, from traditional branding, identity, packaging, retail, and environmental design to conceptual interface and product development in the online and mobile device spaces. She has done award winning work for clients such as Levi Strauss, The Body Shop, Yahoo!, and Visa. Other clients include Revlon, CibaVision, RIM/Blackberry, Radio Shack, Estee Lauder, 24 Hour Fitness, McKesson, Sun Microsystems, Logitech, Disney, and MTV. As ECD, Beth is the creative force behind minibike’s conceptual and creative approach to projects.

Prior to founding minibike, Beth was instrumental in building and leading Chicago-based Arc Worldwide’s (Leo Burnett) San Francisco office’s interactive group. Her role was key in developing the interactive/rich media group within the company, from the internal management side as well as the client side, winning over $12M in new business in just over a year.

Before Arc Worldwide, Beth was a senior Creative Director at Razorfish in San Francisco. During her tenure at the company, she helped land and service major accounts such as Intuit (Quicken) and McKesson and was instrumental in bringing interactive branding experience to clients such as Shutterfly, Sun Microsystems, and Visa.

Prior to Arc Worldwide, from 1997-2002 Beth founded and grew a profitable, award-winning design and brand consultancy, andhow, inc. Clients included many successful start-ups as well as Disney, The Body Shop, and Nexant.
http://www.electricbox.net/andhow

Early in her career, Beth was lucky enough (1993) to work for Clement Mok at Clement Mok Designs, where she formed a nuanced understanding of brand building across platforms (traditional to the newly-emerging digital space) from concept to deployment and beyond. She also built her first website (Lotus), from information architecture to launch under Lillian Svec. Other notable client work included Revo, Herman Miller (the launch of the Aeron chair), Wells Fargo, Intuit, Home Shopping Network, Harper Collins and Logitech. In 1994, after CMD, she worked at Organic Online with Shane Ginsberg and Jonathan Nelson, Vivid Studios with Nathan Shedroff, Landor with Dean Fernandez, Fitch, and Atomic Vision with Matthew Butterick.

Beth’s design and illustration work has been published in Communication Arts, Graphis, The Boston Globe, and Surface Magazine. She is a collected artist who graduated from University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a Bachelor of Fine Arts major and an art history minor.